From: Brad Parsons <parsons@bga.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 95 05:30:33 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: CBS/C.Chung Plan Hit Job on Internet? (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9501110741.A6129-0100000@ivy.bga.com>
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 95 21:02:06 PST
From: Greg Bailey <greg@minerva.com>
Subject: Re: CBS/C.Chung Plan Hit Job on Internet?

Non sequitur, I think, Helen.  The above reads like a lame lemma of
the Gun Control theorem and is based on the same fallacious premises.
Information is not intrinsically harmful.  People are.  Information
and other means need not be controlled.  People must control themselves.
If the people in a society cannot control their temptations to do
evil with whatever means are available to them, the society cannot be
called civilized by any reasonable criteria.  Making information
available is not a crime.  Blowing people up is a crime, and those
who do it should pay pay pay.

Any discipline worth studying gives its students the means to do good
as well as evil, and at least in theory the more they know the greater
their potential to act in either direction.

Throughout history damn fools have tried to limit the scope of evil
by limiting information.  All it has demonstrated is that by doing
so one can hamstring constructive activity while accomplishing nearly
zero against evil due to its tenacity.

It is my opinion that the most evil thing anyone can advocate is the
limiting of information, especially since in many cases those who
propose to do the limiting do not even faintly understand the info
themselves.  It is also my opinion that to resist any efforts to
limit availability of information is *not* to bury one's head under
the sand.  Not at all.

All the theory aside, any elementary school kid who pays attention
and knows how to read can easily acquire the art of making gunpowder.
At least this was true in the fifties when I was at that age, and
being boys my friends and I of course spent many a happy hour out
in secluded fields blowing things up in various ways.  This sort
of thing is basic information that anyone brighter than a rock
can come by.

Connie Chung displays an astounding level of ignorance by suggesting
that high technology has much of anything to do with the phenomenon
she reports upon.  Instead she should be asking why kids now feel
they should blow up people and property instead of old castaway
junk.  *That* is the story, not the Internet, not Encyclopaedia
Britannica ... quoting from this year's edition, by the way, from
our kids' book case:

  gunpowder ... The first such mixture was black powder, which consists
  of a mixture of saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulfur, and charcoal.
  When prepared in roughly the correct proportions (75 percent saltpetre,
  14 percent charcoal, and 11 percent sulfur), it burns rapidly when
  ignited and produces ... Because the burning of black powder is a
  surface phenomenon, a fine granulation burns faster than a coarse
  one ... [more straightforward practical information follows]

I wonder if Connie reads the encyclopedia.
I wonder if she even has one?

Grins...

    Greg Bailey     |  ATHENA Programming, Inc  |  503-621-3215  |
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